Little Monster
by Gamma Orionis
Summary: Hannibal doesn't need Abigail to be a lure, the way her father used her. He has more use for a fellow hunter.
1. Chapter 1

The pain in the side of Abigail's head was unbearable.

It was the first thing she became aware of, and it was so intense that she couldn't think of anything else. She was vaguely conscious that she was on her back on a hard, lumpy surface, but that was completely inconsequential compared to the feeling that her right ear was on fire.

She whimpered and lifted a hand to press against her ear, but her fingers met not the familiar texture of hair and skin, but a wad of something rough and sticky.

"Ahhh..." Her throat was dry, but not so bad that she couldn't whimper. When she touched the rough, sticky thing, fresh pain shot through her head, and her body jolted reactively. Her left foot connected with something hard and unyielding when it twitched.

"Abigail."

A voice. A familiar voice. Patient and clear.

She managed to open one eye. The world was blindingly bright, and she shut it again quickly, but she didn't have to see anything to recognize who was speaking. She knew that voice, that accent – she had known it from the first time she had heard it. "Ha...a?" She couldn't make her tongue do what she wanted.

"Can you hear me?" he asked clearly, and she managed to nod. "Can you speak?"

"Ha... Hannibal," she managed, and felt his hand rest steadily on her arm.

"Good," he said. "I was beginning to worry about you. The dose of morphine I gave you was quite strong."

The words took a long time to sink in. Abigail's brain felt clumsy, like every thought she was having had to wade through mud to make itself known. She had to repeat what Hannibal had said several times back to herself to be sure she really understood it – though perhaps that had more to do with _what_ he had said than how well her mind was working.

"Morphine?" Questions were rising up in Abigail's mind now, faster and faster, and she forced her mouth to form words, no matter how she had to labour for each syllable.

"To numb the pain."

"Why... pain?"

"Your ear, Abigail."

Her ear. She reached up again, and her fingers clamped down over the mass on the side of her head. It came away in her hand.

Abigail's eyes flew open. She was dazzled for a moment, but the light was not so bright that she could not squint at what she was holding. It was gauze, folded into a neat, tight pack, and stained brown and red. Her thumb passed over the brightest red spot and she felt that it was wet and warm.

She looked up, and Hannibal came into focus – first his silhouette against a light, and then the details of his expressionless face. He was standing over her, and looking at her head. At her ear.

The gauze fell from her fingers, and she raised her hand slowly and touched her ear.

Or, rather, she touched the place where it should have been.

All she felt was a raw, sticky wound.

Abigail screamed and jolted upright. Her head spun, and she scrubbed her hands desperately against the sheets. Hannibal's arms were around her in a moment, holding her firmly against his chest, but she struggled and writhed, shrieking all the while.

"My ear! My _ear!_" The words came out slurred and messy, but she couldn't have made them clearer if she tried.

"It had to be done, Abigail," he said calmly.

"_Where is it?_"

"I will explain everything when you are calm enough to understand."

Calm? _Calm?_ How could he possibly expect her to be _calm_? How could _he_ sound so calm? She tried to pull out of his arms, but he was much stronger than her, and kept her pinned in place. Her screaming dissolved into tears of pain and panic, and he used one hand to caress her hair.

"What happened?" she sobbed. "_What_?"

He didn't answer, just kept stroking her hair and rocking her gently back and forth until she was exhausted with shrieking and crying. When all she could do was hang limply in his arms, in shock, he finally relaxed his grip on her. She slumped backwards and her head cracked against the wall.

"Are you better?" he asked, and Abigail nodded numbly, though _better_ certainly wasn't how she would describe herself. She just didn't have the energy to continue to express how far she was from anything that could be described as "better".

"What happened to my ear?" she asked at last, forcing the words out very slowly and evenly.

"What do you remember last?"

She swallowed, and began to shake afresh. She closed her eyes, then opened them again quickly. Closing her eyes brought the memory too close. "A... asking you if you- you were going to kill me."

Hannibal's face didn't change. He blinked at her patiently. "And what did I say? Do you remember?"

"You said..." The scene had become hazy in her mind, though whether that was the effect of the morphine on her memory, or whether she had simply become hysterical with fear. "You said that you couldn't protect me in this life."

"That's right."

"So..." She was almost afraid to say it, for fear that she would inspire him to change his mind. "Why aren't I dead?"

Hannibal didn't answer at once. He took her hand and stroked it, turned it over in his, traced the lines on her palm with his thumb. "You are a daughter to me, Abigail."

She stared at him dumbly.

"You don't believe me."

"_My ear_."

"Removing your ear was a necessity."

_Removing_. _Removing_ her ear. Removing her ear was a _necessity_. Because she was like a daughter to him. She touched the side of her head again.

"Where... is it?"

"Perhaps now is not the time," he said, and stood up. Abigail lurched to her feet and grabbed at him, more for support than to try to keep him with her. The ground was uneven beneath her feet – or perhaps it only seemed that way. He caught her and guided her back down to the bed.

"Tell me what's happening!" she demanded, and the words came easier now, though whether that was because her mind was really becoming clearer, or because some sort of instinct had taken over, she wasn't sure. "I don't understand! Where am I? Where's Will, where's Doctor Bloom? You have to tell me right now!"

Hannibal sat down again, folded his hands in his lap, and leaned back.

"Will is in prison," he said. "For your murder."

Abigail blinked at him, and he looked back with a face so impassive that he might have just told her that Will was at the grocery store, picking up asparagus. She couldn't even figure out what to say. She doubted that, even at her most lucid, she would have known what to say to that.

"But..." she said at last, "I'm not dead."

"You and I know that, Abigail. Will does not, and the people who will be convicting him certainly don't."

"So... you're framing him."

Hannibal's mouth curved up into a terribly self-satisfied little smile. "Yes."

"For my murder."

He inclined his head, something between a nod and a bow.

"_Why_?"

"The Chesapeake Ripper needed to be arrested."

"You framed him for _all_ your murders?"

Hannibal smiled again, rather indulgently. "Certainly not. Only for the murders attributed to the Chesapeake Ripper."

"Oh." Abigail shivered. She almost asked how many murders he'd committed that _weren't_ attributed to the Chesapeake Ripper, but she kept her mouth shut – it was asking a question like that that had gotten her in this place to begin with. She was probably better off not knowing, anyway.

"Believe me, Abigail, I did this for your sake as much as for mine."

She stared up at him with utter disbelief. "You pretended to kill me to get Will sent to jail."

"What do you think would have happened if I did not? You would be arrested for assisting in your father's crimes. There would have been nothing I could do to protect you. This was the best option for both of us."

"So..." Abigail swallowed hard. "What are you going to do with me now?"

Hannibal reached out and cupped the spot where her ear should have been. His thumb traced around the raw skin. The gesture would have been tender if it hadn't stung so much.

"For now, I am going to ensure that you have a safe place to rest," he told her. "You are in my home now, and can expect no one to intrude. And then..."

"Then?"

He considered, then shook his head. "All in good time, Abigail. For the moment, what you need is to recuperate. When you are fit to be active again, then..."

"_Then?_"

He smiled, and it would have been sweet if the circumstances hadn't been so sinister.

"You will be very happy with me, Abigail. I promise."


	2. Chapter 2

Hannibal answered no more questions. She couldn't have rightly called what he had done before _answering them_ anyway, but at least he had _responded_. When she pried for more explanation, he petted her hair and told her to go back to sleep, and eventually, she gave up and curled up into a ball with one hand over the place where her ear had been.

She must have fallen asleep, because when she opened her eyes again, there was gauze over her wound again, and Hannibal was gone.

Abigail sat up gingerly. Her head spun for a moment, but the room came into focus soon enough, and she was able to look around.

She was on a bed. It was a thin mattress on an iron bedstead like she'd seen in hospitals in old movies, and it stood against a raw, water-stained cement wall. A rickety wooden chair stood by the bed – where Hannibal had been sitting last time she was awake, she supposed – and a fairly handsome but still rather decrepit cabinet stood in the corner. The glass panels were smudged to opacity, and a haze of dust hung over everything. Abigail wouldn't have thought that any part of Hannibal's home could be so grimy. She had imagined that each square foot of space in his possession would be mahogany-finished and stylishly decorated with prints of famous artwork, like every room in his home that she'd been in.

There was no famous artwork surrounding her now, and the closest thing to mahogany were the unsanded two-by-fours that made up the frame of the walls and rafters.

Abigail slipped out of the bed. The concrete floor was cold and rough on her bare feet, and it pitched underneath her, forcing her to grab onto the bedstead again for support. When the ground steadied again, she let go and managed to take a few wobbly steps.

The entire world seemed tilted to the side, and she had trouble judging distance. When she put her hand out to try to touch a wall, her fingers met something flexible and rubbery. She squinted hard, and in the dim light of the single bare lightbulb Hannibal had left burning over her bed, she could make out a heavy plastic sheet suspended from the ceiling. She pushed past it, and reached the opposite wall, feeling someone relieved to put her hand on rough, cold cement. There was a reality to it that was comforting.

Satisfied that her limbs were in working order, Abigail turned and returned to the bed slowly. Her boots were set neatly by the foot of the bed. She reached for them, but found that she couldn't quite get the zippers undone, and abandoned them, askew, where they had been. She returned to the bed and lay down on her back, a little dizzy from even the minor exertion. Her head was throbbing audibly, the blood rushing in her ears – all the louder in the ear that was not there.

"You're awake."

Even though it made her head spin, Abigail jolted upright at the sound of Hannibal's voice. She had to squint into the gloom for a few moments before she could make out his silhouette, even when he stepped out of the shadows and into the full light of the bulb. He was holding a tray with a bowl and glass on it.

"I brought you dinner." He seated himself in the chair, balancing the tray on his lap, and Abigail was overwhelmed with a pleasant, spicy smell. She squinted at the bowl, and could see steam rising off broth. There were small sprigs of parsley folded into tiny bouquets floating around the rim. Her stomach growled insistently, and she forced herself to look away from the soup and up at Hannibal instead.

"What's in it?"

"Pork."

"Really?"

"Do you expect me to lie to you about the food?"

"Should I?"

Hannibal smiled fondly at her. "Not today, Abigail. But if you find it unsatisfactory, I am sure I could arrange a different meal."

"No, that's okay," she said quickly, and reached out to take the tray. Her mouth watered in anticipation, and she sent up a quick prayer to anyone who might be listening that she wasn't eating anybody she had known.

The spoon wouldn't quite pick up the soup – she couldn't make it stay steady, and liquid spilled off one side or the other, no matter how she tried to balance her hand. At last, she raised the whole bowl to her mouth and gulped down as much soup as she could get into her mouth at once. It splashed against her cheeks and down her neck, and tears came to her eyes when it scalded her, but now she couldn't stop.

"You'll make yourself ill," Hannibal commented, and, unwillingly, Abigail forced herself to lower the bowl.

She stared at him, and he looked back at her, watching her with a slightly thoughtful, but mostly inscrutable expression. When at last he spoke, his voice was as pleasant and cordial as ever, but he did look away from her.

"You are wondering if I still intend to kill you."

"I'm wondering when." Abigail tried to sound brave, but her voice failed her and came out as a whisper.

"I don't want you dead, Abigail. If I did, rest assured that you would not be alive now." His words chilled Abigail to the bone. "I meant it when I said you are a daughter to me."

"So I'm supposed to be your daughter." Tears stung her eyes, and she willed them not to fall. "Will's supposed to be your friend."

"Will is my friend."

"You said you sent him to jail. You said you framed him for the Ripper murders."

"That's correct."

"That's not friendship." Abigail shook her head hard. "Are you a better father than a friend?"

"You are being very brave for a girl in your situation." Hannibal didn't sound angry, but there was a hint of coldness in his voice that had not been there before. "Rude, even. I will attribute it to shock." He took a visibly deep breath, then looked her dead in the eye.

"Abigail," he said. He spoke her name with a sort of deliberation, pronouncing each syllable and sound clearly. _Ah-bee-gail_. As if to make it perfectly clear that he was speaking to her and her alone, even though there was no one else around who could cast doubt on that. "I do not want to harm you any more than has been absolutely necessary. I wish to protect you. I have saved your life for a reason, Abigail, and if you will allow me, I will ensure that you have a good future ahead of you. I will ensure that it is one far better than you could have had if I had taken a different course of action. But I will need your cooperation if I am to do this. And I do not tolerate rudeness. Am I clear?"

There was only one right answer.

"Yes."

"Good."

Abigail wet her lips with her tongue, hesitant to ask any further questions (_what did Hannibal consider rude?_), but at last she asked, in what she hoped was a very polite voice, "So... what are you going to do with me while I'm down here?"

"You are an exceedingly clever girl," he told her, which hardly seemed like an answer to her question. _But then, Hannibal was good at giving answers without really answering_. "Clever in ways that are very familiar to me."

She watched him, and he watched her, and at last he smiled, and it was the most genuine smile she could ever remember seeing on _anyone_.

"I'm going to teach you, Abigail."


End file.
